Innovating Justice Forum
For those who might be interested, there is a forum open to discuss issues related to “innovating justice.” The debate has gotten a bit lively, and can be found at this link: Justice
My initial post is below, and in context on the Innovating Justice forum site.
Perhaps I’m not catching the drift here, but I don’t understand the strong line between discussions about human interaction and the more “banal” need to plan and implement. Conflict engagement work is, I think, at base a process of understanding and perhaps – perhaps – intervening in environments where human beings are interacting with each other under stress, anxiety, and often danger. That happens, albeit quite differently, in developed and developing countries. What we do, on a very basic level, as individuals with enough ego and passion to intervene in these situations is to help conflicted groups and individuals communicate, manage information, and deal with group dynamics (in the largest sense, politics). In order to do this well, whether with or without using ICT, conditions and realities in the communities where the conflict occurs has to drive actions. I say has to, but in the past there has been more than ample evidence that Western (and I mean European as well as American) intervenors have been at best insensitive to local conditions. Putting ODR in the mix, it seems to me, does not change the basic nature of most conflict environments, and it does not relieve the duty to be sensitive to local conditions (or, often to take the path that most conflict intervenors are not willing to take – admitting that their approach and usefulness is limited and that they should choose to not engage). What the use of ODR technology does do is significant: it alters or creates channels of communication, alters or creates new ways to gather and share information, and helps manage or even redefine “groups.” As many of us have noted, this holds true for those who wish to subversively and positively redefine power relationships, and for those who wish to perpetuate power relationships that are self-serving and oppressive. We were talking about all of this long before ODR was an issue at all, we are still talking about it, and to borrow Faulkner’s words, we’ll be talking about it when “the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening.” At the same time, if we are going to use ODR in any sense, someone has to do the perhaps banal work of planning, implementing, etc. As both Sanjana and Colin surely know, questions about which technology to use, who created it, who uses it, who controls it, who has access to it, etc., etc., are not merely questions of practical implementation – they strike at the heart of applicability, safety, sensitivity, willingness to use, and effectiveness, particularly effectiveness as a subversive element.